Tag: Shawn Michaels

The redankulous AWA Team Challenge Series pilot filled me with such joy that I’ve decided to watch the other limited AWA offerings the WWE Network has available. This is a review of an episode of AWA ESPN Championship Wrestling that’s clearly only on the WWE Network because it’s got rookie of the year edition of Shawn Michaels debuting on it. So let’s check it out!

We start things off with Johnny Saint standing in an NXT ring in Royal Albert Hall. This opening kind of ends up being a spoiler of things to come since the show didn’t air live. Saint does a voice over and talks about the history of grappling in the UK before we get the show open and head to the commentary team for the evening, Mauro Ranallo and Nigel McGuinness.

I’ve decided to take a look back at Badd Blood: In Your House. This is the PPV that gave us the first ever Hell in a Cell match as well as the debut of Kane. It was also, unfortunately, overshadowed by the unexpected death of Brian Pillman, which was discovered several hours before the show took place.

I watched this live on PPV back in the day, but outside of the three things I’ve mentioned I have no memory of anything that took place on this show. So let’s check it out and see what sort of hidden classics I’ve forgotten about since 1997.

Back before the WWE Network, 18 “Monthly Specials” and 900 hours of broadcast television a week there was scant little wrestling to watch. Sure there was stuff like Jim Crockett Promotions/NWA/WCW on the Superstation and the AWA on ESPN but that sort of stuff didn’t really appeal much to children. The WWF, however, had just the thing to meet the wrestling needs of small children across the United States: Coliseum Videos.
These tapes would have a few matches, often “Coliseum Video exclusives” filmed either at house shows or as dark matches during Wrestling Challenge tapings alongside goofy backstage stuff and profiles on various wrestlers. For those of us who became wrestling fans in the 80s or early 90s the Coliseum Videos became an integral part of our fandom, frequently being rented from the local video rental store and watched repeatedly. So when the WWE recently dumped a bunch of them up on the WWE Network, I for one was very excited.

While a lot of the matches on these tapes weren’t exactly five-star mat classics there are some hidden classics as well as matches that I, for whatever reason, thought were great when I was ten years old. Today we’re going to check on what is probably the pinnacle of the Coliseum Videos, 1993’s Smack ‘Em Whack ‘Em.

Welcome everyone to Monday Night Raw coming to you live from the Manhattan Center with your hosts Good Ol’ JR and Jerry “The King” Lawler. We’ve got the old wailing siren of yore and the entire thing is set up like an episode of Raw from 1993, complete with an ICOPRO banner.

Lawler promises that this will be the most memorable Raw ever. It would turn out that he was either gravely mistaken or outright lying…

We get the old Saturday Night Live Band style Raw opening with wild saxophones and shit. The title card is emblazoned with “Happy Anniversary.” We head in to the arena where Shawn Michaels and Vince McMahon are standing by to introduce us to the second anniversary of WWF Monday Night Raw.

Of the “Big Four” WWE PPVs my favorite has always been the Royal Rumble. Sure WrestleMania has bigger marquee matches but there’s something awesome about seeing a bunch of dudes clubbering one another and tossing each other out of the ring and seeing what random legend they bring back in to throw a couple dudes out of the ring before ultimately getting eliminated.

Today we’re going to take a look at the 2009 edition of the Royal Rumble coming to us from the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit.

Mankind’s Hardcore Championship is on the line in a ladder match, but the deck is stacked against him. Can Mankind overcome the odds or with The Corporation reign supreme? Watch this match and find out!

Welcome to Walton, Kentucky where Kevin Kelly is standing outside the house of Brian Pillman for an interview that will be conducted later in the night to give an update on the condition of his ankle after receiving surgery on it last week after Steve Austin had destroyed it.

Stone Cold Steve Austin had threatened to come to Pillman’s house and finish the job, but up to this point Austin had not showed…

Fireworks explode and JR and Lawler welcome us to Monday Night Raw. Shawn Michaels is not with them this week, at least not yet. JR gives us a rundown of some of the matches scheduled for tonight and says that before any of that can get underway WWF owner, Mr. McMahon has some shit to say about what happened last week.